"We were caught off guard by this perennial Republican attack-dog mentality," says Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a potential 2008 presidential candidate, reflecting on 2004. "We've got to find ways to develop our own."
Good point, Bill! I think we all were caught completely off guard by that surprising Republican attack-dog approach. After all, Republicans have always been downright chivalrous in their approach to elections. Who could forget ...
1972: G. Gordon Liddy tells Richard Nixon he's willing to break into DNC headquarters and get the dirt on Hubert Humphrey. Outraged, Nixon personally drags Liddy before a national television audience and beats him briskly about the face and neck before offering to concede the election. Humphrey declines, and an impressed electorate sends Nixon back to the White House with a resounding triumph.
1988: Lee Atwater tries to make political hay out of the fact that Michael Dukakis once set a scary non-white inmate free to commit scary non-white crimes. An offended George H. W. Bush responds by convincing Ronald Reagan to free several non-white federal convicts, and then he takes the inmates on a trip to King's Dominion, where they ride rides and eat ice cream and don't rape or murder anybody. Everybody has a laugh and learns a little something, too, and Bush wins in a landslide.
2002: GOP operatives, including Ann Coulter, poke fun at Georgia Sen. Max Cleland for only losing three of his limbs in Vietnam. His opponent in that year's senatorial race, Saxby Chambliss, is so ashamed of his associates that he hacks off all of his own limbs and is wheeled to an easy victory over Cleland, the Democratic incumbent.
So who could have seen 2004's dirty GOP tricks coming, except for Bill Richardson, whom we're going to start calling "Ol' Eagle Eye" for his keen powers of observation. With geniuses like Ol' Eagle Eye on the case, Democrats should next win another election in the year never. Start writing your campaign-donation checks now!
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